Rockets wilt under Heat’s late run
Listless play with break looming leads to loss
Like a car crash in which everything seems so clear, as if in slow motion, just before impact, the Rockets saw the peril in front of them. By then, it was too late to prevent the damage.
They had rolled into the final game before the All-Star break, feeling happy with their February turnaround. They were healthy and ready to enjoy the time off in the company of their 40-win record.
If that was a trap too unoriginal to be missed, the Rockets fell into it anyway. They opened the game in a low-energy funk that sent the Miami Heat on a roll too great for the Rockets to turn around before the Heat held off a late run for a 117-109 win Wednesday night at Toyota Center.
With that, the Rockets took their first tip-to-buzzer loss of the season and knew why.
“We won four in a row,” D’Antoni said. “We’re at home. Last game before All-Star break. It’s a trap game. Our crowd usually doesn’t get here until about 8, and we didn’t
start playing until about 8. That’s just the way it is. The energy was dead in the arena. We were dead.
“It’s one we hate to lose. But I just told them, ‘Look, it’s All-Star break. We’re 40-18. We’re a couple games up on anybody in fourth place in the loss column. It’s pretty good.’ We’re going to have clunkers. That was a clunker.”
The Rockets did not even come away with that good health they thought they had with Eric Gordon’s return from a sore back. Guard Pat Beverley went out in the second quarter with a strained left groin muscle.
“He strained it a little bit,” D’Antoni said. “I don’t think he tore anything. It shouldn’t be too bad.”
Even with Beverley, the Rockets’ intensity was so lacking that the Heat made 10 of 12 shots to open the game. Even with their miss-and-rebound second quarter, the Heat made 52.4 percent of their shots. With the Rockets struggling to get stops or to rebound the misses, they could not run, scoring a season-low four fast-break points.
“We didn’t really give ourselves a chance,” forward Corey Brewer said. “For us to be the team we want to be, we’ve got to play D. We’ve really got to rebound. That was terrible tonight. They played harder than us tonight.”
More than the Rockets’ poor shooting in the first half, the loss of Beverley or hot shooting of the Heat guards Goran Dragic and Dion Waiters, the Heat simply outworked the Rockets to loose balls or on the boards.
“They just played harder than us,” said forward Ryan Anderson, who had 14 of his 17 points in the fourth-quarter rally. “It was kind of a frustrating night. We couldn’t get ourselves going.”
The Rockets did make a second-half run after trailing by 20 points. When James Harden sank a 3-pointer and finished a drive to give the Rockets a last chance, down 109-101 with 2½ minutes remaining.
Harden had 38 points with 12 rebounds and 12 assists, giving him his 15th triple-double of the season, one more than Hakeem Olajuwon’s franchise record for a career. But the Heat had clicked for too long to be stopped with the game on the line.
With a pair of Dragic drives and a Hassan Whiteside dunk, the Heat pushed the lead back to double digits. When the Rockets closed to within six in the final half-minute, Waiters put in two free throws to ice the win.
“Our energy wasn’t great from the beginning of the game,” Harden said. “When you give a team like that confidence — they’ve been playing well — it’s hard to come back and win.”
That was not the way the Rockets envisioned themselves heading into the break. But they did get a reminder of how much even a 40-18 team needs the sense of urgency.
“Trap game,” Harden said. “We just got to get our minds right, get some rest and get ready to go finish off strong.”